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Frank Ambrose Beach, Jr. was born in Emporia, Kansas, the first of three children to Frank Ambrose Beach and Bertha Robinson Beach.[1] Although he respected his father, a distinguished Professor of Music at Kansas State Teachers College (now Emporia State University), Frank Beach Jr. often rebelled against him.[1] Beach began an English major at Emporia, but was sent to Antioch College for his sophomore year.[1] Beach graduated in 1932, and, unable to find a job, accepted a fellowship in clinical psychology at Emporia. Beach completed a thesis on color vision in rats.[1] He moved to the University of Chicago, where he met behavioristKarl Lashley,[1][2] who had perhaps the strongest influence on Beach's professional life.[1] Financial difficulties forced Beach to leave Chicago, and took a high school teaching position in Yates Center, Kansas,[1] where he married his first wife. The union was short-lived.[1]

Frank Beach is remembered as a serious scholar and researcher, who believed that "increasing knowledge, in and of itself, is a justifiable way to spend your life.”[1] However, he was also known for his sense of fun,[1] and humorously coined the term "Coolidge effect" based on an old joke about U.S. President Calvin Coolidge.[1] Throughout his professional career, his greatest interests remained in the field of behaviour, remarking that “Man’s greatest problem today is not to understand and exploit his physical environment, but to understand and govern his own conduct.”[1]

At age sixty-five, Beach wrote the following autobiographical statement, which was preceded by a list of goals he wished to achieve:

Of course, I shall never accomplish all the goals just listed, but that is unimportant. What counts is to have aims, to be able to work hard toward them and to experience the satisfaction of at least believing that progress is being made. I do not want to cross the finish line of this race – not ever – but I do hope I will be able to keep running at my own pace until I drop out still moving in full stride. It’s been one hell of a good race.[2]